


Sleepless

by shieldivarius



Series: Femslash Yuletide 2014 [24]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, Femslash Yuletide, Gen, Mission Fic, Prompt: Sleepless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-09 21:16:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8912278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: Natasha and Melinda round up the last two Advent Gang members in the middle of the night on Christmas.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> All of the Melinda/Natasha stories in this year's Femslash Yuletide are in the same universe and chronological unless stated otherwise! Reading the previous ones will make this one make a lot more sense. It's more of a chapter than a standalone story.

With only two members of the gang left to round up, Natasha had her work cut out for her. 

At least, she would have, if those they already had in custody had been a little more willing to talk. But whoever was pulling the strings (the man called _Grinch_ , like he nursed a grudge against the entire holiday season, leading to his launching this fool campaign against the city in the first place) either inspired so much loyalty in his gang members that they were unwilling to strike a deal to bring him in, or he hadn't given out the details of every operation before it was set to go down.

It seemed like a bit of both.

But it was Christmas Eve, and with her own deadline looming, Natasha had set up on a bench across from a just-closed coffee shop, nursing a still-steaming tea in her hands. Even without having received any intel from the cousins already in custody, Natasha had a good idea of where to look.   
 Just down the street from this coffee shop there was an old apartment building where three of the five lived. In her tracking down of the seven in the photo, even with all of the resources of S.H.I.E.L.D. at her disposal—or at least most of them, given that a couple of departments were moving more slowly than the Christmas Eve traffic crawling down the road right now—she hadn't managed to find a permanent address more recent than five years old on record for one of her two fugitive gang members.

When that address, an apartment in his mother's basement in Jersey, hadn't panned out, Natasha changed tact. People were predictable, if nothing else, and when nothing in Ernest Handler's social media presence indicated he had a significant other he might be crashing with, she'd scoped out the other cousin's residences instead.

That had lead her to this building, which seemed a more likely place than any for him—and hopefully the other wayward cousin—to be laying low. She (needlessly, with how quickly it was cooling out in the December temperatures) blew across the top of her tea before taking a sip. An older woman, the door held for her by a young man, no doubt a grandson, exited the building as she watched. The two got into a taxi idling by the curb, and Natasha waited until it had pulled away to get caught in the traffic stopped at the next red light before she rose and headed toward the building.

None of the cousins lived on the same floor, but one lived on the ground level and she started there, circling around the outside and counting the units carefully based on their doors. With the scarf Melinda had given her wrapped twice around her neck and pulled up to hide the lower half of her face and her hair tucked up under her hat, Natasha had her identity as hidden as it could be. They didn't need a redux of the P.R. nightmare of an Avenger being caught breaking and entering. Even if she was working an op, she didn't exactly have a warrant to be snooping around.

The building didn't have great surveillance, but she kept her gaze downturned anyway, head angled toward the ground and peering with her peripheral vision through each open window. Most of the units were well-lit inside, with some families celebrating Christmas Eve and others going about their normal routines, unaffected by a holiday they didn't observe.

She had an old developer's sketch of the building on her phone, and consulted it when she reached a dark window on the north-east side of the building. It was the only unit where the snow underneath the window hadn't been fully trampled and marked up by people walking across it, and Natasha carefully veered around the untouched snow to the shovelled path that lead up to the patio door.

Switching the mode on her phone, she held it up a little way back from the wall and scanned for heat signatures within the apartment beyond. When the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom all came up empty, she slid her lock picking tools from her pocket and let herself in.

The apartment hadn't been decorated for Christmas and Natasha frowned, wondering for a moment if she'd gotten it wrong. But the same photo she'd found online sat in a dusty frame on a bookshelf cluttered with video games and blu-ray cases, and bits of discarded wires and half-built pieces of tech cluttered the watermarked coffee table.   
  She pocketed a couple of almost-finished pieces to bring back to R&D, and let herself out the front entrance and into the building proper. Even through her scarf the hall smelled of stale cigarette smoke and the dingy, stained old carpet, and Natasha wrinkled her nose and headed for the stairwell, bypassing both elevators out of desire to avoid meeting anyone in them. The stairs she took two at a time up to the third floor, where the next cousin's apartment sat in the same corner as the first.

This apartment, too, she scanned first. A blurry figure showed up on the screen, moving around just beyond the door. Beside it were two smaller heat spots, like burners on the stove. Keeping her tools tucked away and saving force as a backup option, Natasha knocked. After all, here, at the end of the hallway with a straight view down at all of the entrances to all of the units on the floor, she had a greater chance of being seen working the lock.

No one answered the door, but the bright spot on her screen froze, and then started retreating from the door. 

Natasha slid her phone away and tested the doorknob, finding it locked. 

Hoping that the person inside wasn't going to do something stupid like jump from the balcony while she let herself in, Natasha glanced down the hall and knocked once more before picking the lock here, as well. Kicking the door in crossed her mind, but as much as she'd like to relieve some of the frustration of being a month into this case, it showed little finesse and made a lot of noise.

And besides, the inhabitant was paranoid enough to have set the chain. 

Natasha scowled and glanced over her shoulder, checking up and down the hall and listening for sounds coming from other apartments. She pocketed her lock picks, trading them for a lipstick-sized laser cutter strong enough to slice through the thick metal of the chain. 

A great bang came from the inside of the apartment, the sound reverberating through the walls like the man had thrown something heavy at one of them. It drowned out the sizzle of the tool starting up. 

"Yo!" came a shout from inside one of the neighbouring units. "The hell you doing in there, Handler!?"

Natasha swore under her breath and dialled up the power on the little tool. It grew hot in her hand as the beam grew wider, threatening to melt down and burn her fingertips. A small clink sounded through the door when part of the chain gave. 

"I'll call the police if you don't turn that off!" the man called from inside.

"Please, do," Natasha said. She hadn't lowered her scarf or taken her hat off, having expected to be in and out a little more quickly, and between being inside and the growing heat of the tool in her hand, sweat was starting to drip down the back of her neck. 

"I'm dialling 9-1-1! I have the right to protect my property!"

"The registered resident of this unit is in custody," Natasha said coolly, sure he wasn't doing any such thing.

The cutter broke through the rest of the chain loop and Natasha pushed the door open, sliding inside and smoothly shutting it behind her just as another door opened down the hallway—no doubt the neighbour coming to see what the ruckus was.

The door opened directly into the kitchen with hardly three feet of bleached, cracked vinyl flooring before the tile started. She opened the small coat closet to her right. More of the same bits of tech she'd seen downstairs littered the floor, scattered pieces caught in boot- and shoelaces and most covered in salt stains from the drippings of winter boots and looking discarded and unsalvageable.   
  She patted the coats, pushing them aside in case Ernest Handler was a very thin, very quiet man, then closed the door when her search didn't turn up anything. 

One long step took her into the kitchen where a pot frothed and foamed on the stove, water spilling over the edges and dripping with a sizzle onto the element beneath it. She turned the stove off as she passed—both that element and one at the back where canned pasta sauce simmered on low. 

A little round pressboard table sat in the corner next to the kitchen, a small uncovered window above it. It was through the reflections in that window that Natasha studied the living room around the blind corner from the kitchen. This unit had a Christmas tree set up and decorated in the corner. It was a fake one, spindly and cheap looking with the star set crooked on the top. Garish, large bulbed lights—the outdoor kind—wrapped sparsely around it and blasted colour through the room.

Ernest Handler might not have been calling the police, but he was standing there with his cell phone in hand, his figure silhouetted against the tree. He had the phone held out in front of him, posed with his index fingers up along the sides to hold it steady, his thumbs hovering low on the screen.

Recording, no doubt, or waiting for her to round the corner so he could snap a photo.

Checking that her scarf and hat hadn’t slipped, Natasha darted out of the kitchen. She took the sharp angle into the living area with three quick steps of her feet and all but launched herself forward into Handler, knocking his phone from his hand to bounce off the floor on its edge and then smack face down.

Handler shied backward. The backs of his knees caught against the coffee table behind him and he pinwheeled his arms a moment, trying to catch himself, before he went down.

He bounced from the table and rolled, landing on the floor between it and the TV on his hands and knees. He scrambled forward after a moment’s recovery and grabbed for his phone.

He flipped it over and let out a cry, gesturing at the cracked screen.

"You broke my phone!"

"I think you'll find that hard to prove," she said, eyebrows high. "Now, get up."

He looked at her warily instead of complying, still on his knees and cradling the smashed phone in his hands. The back light still shone up through the cracks and she hoped it hadn't continued to record.

She folded her arms across her chest, glaring at him from over the bulk of her scarf and wishing she could see a clock. This Handler wasn't the ring leader, and that meant she needed to make one more stop before the night was over in order to do this right.

She imagined Melinda, hopefully sleeping, tucked into bed and cozy instead of sitting on the couch awake and waiting for her to come home. Belatedly, she wondered if she shouldn't have made sure to hang around until Mel was ready for bed, and make sure she wouldn't be missed. She could probably have snuck out without being noticed if she'd tried hard enough.

Handler started to rise and Natasha gave him space to come forward, studying the room and idly searching for a copy of the same family photo the others seemed to have.

Nothing on display out here, not even a small snapshot with the resident in it. In the bedroom, maybe.

"What do you want?"

She pulled a zip tie from her pocket, cupping it coiled in her hand. She'd hoped, but hadn't expected, that they'd be together so she wouldn't have to make a stop at HQ before going after the last one.

No such luck.

"I'm with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she growled. 

He finally had one leg under him at this point. And though he continued to cradle his phone like he thought he might be able to repair it with gentle enough handling, he shifted like he was thinking of putting his hands up—or bolting. Worry crossed his face, and he looked up at her like he was starting to put two-and-two together and identify her even though the scarf around her face.

There were rules around using excessive amounts of force against civilians—especially unsanctioned. Of course, there were also rules about breaking into suspects' homes and running solo ops without a backend.

That is, they were frowned upon and considered rogue, dangerous behaviour.

But it was Christmas Eve, and she wasn't going to call Maria Hill and ask for a signature on a go order. She'd get it backdated in the morning.

"Get up and turn around," she said, starting a ten-count in her head. 

Handler didn't move. Remained on one knee, in fact, like he thought that if he stayed still enough, he would melt into the floor and make his escape. With the kind of tech she’d seen from this Gang so far, she wouldn’t even be surprised if it happened. 

Eight.

Nine.

He shifted, just the slightest motion of his shoulders that suggested he'd finally become uncomfortable with the intensity of her staring him down. But he didn't rise, and in fact didn't seem at all concerned otherwise.

Ten.

Natasha closed the distance between them in two steps. Handler scrambled to get to his feet, but he'd left it too late, as though thinking she was bluffing. She knocked him to the floor, flat on his back with his legs skewed awkwardly around him, and turned him over in a rough motion with her hand fisted in the shoulder of his shirt. 

He let out a shout—in pain or frustration it was hard to know for sure. It was loud enough, though, to be heard the next unit over, and someone banged on the wall in response. 

Thin walls. Cheap building. 

"Shut the fuck up, Handler!" the neighbour shouted through the wall, his words not muffled nearly as well as they should've been if the unit had been insulated properly.

As though she might be able to see it through the kitchen, Natasha glanced toward the front door. Sure enough, a moment later, banging came from it. 

"Open the fucking door or I'll break it down!"

Lovely. She'd waded right into the middle of a neighbour's spat, one that this particular Handler probably wasn't even at the core of. Like she'd needed something else to delay her night. All she needed was someone else to call the cops.

And then she _would_  be talking to Hill in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve.

"Stay here," she hissed, yanking his arms back and fastening the zip tie around his wrists, binding them tight behind him. 

"Fuck you," Handler muttered.

He shifted his knees under him as though trying to rise, and Natasha flattened him with a knee to his back. He groaned, but didn't immediately try again, giving her leave to go to the front door.

The neighbour still pounded on it, so hard that the door was bouncing back and forth on its hinges, the frame creaking like it might give way. And really, good riddance to the idiot inhabitant if he lost his security deposit because of an angry neighbour.

But the more destruction, whether she caused it or not, the more paperwork for her later.

"Can I help you?" she asked, yanking the door open and dipping back with a graceful arch of her spine to avoid a fist to the face when he tried to keep pounding on thin air. The man glared at her—full on glared, staring down and looming over her from a height of about six and a half feet—as though wanting her to explain how she had the audacity to answer the door when he'd been shouting at someone else.

"Where's Handler?" he demanded. 

Natasha loosened her scarf, which had slipped in her tussle with Handler to sit in a messy, twisted lump around her neck. "Otherwise occupied," she said. "Go home and I'll make sure you're not bothered again tonight."  

He continued looking at her through narrow, beady little eyes that didn't look all too intelligent. He appeared to be scrambling to follow the conversation, while distracted otherwise—probably with trying to place her, now that there was nothing to disguise her except the hat covering her hair. 

His eyes glinted the moment he caught up, "Listen, sweetheart—“ and there was strike one “—you're new here, so Imma tell you—I ain't stayin' up the resta the night, listening to you and fucking Handler banging." 

Some days that wouldn’t be strike two. Tonight it was.

"You misunderstand me," she said, marvelling at her own patience. The rest of the hall was still quiet, though, and maybe if she smoothed this over, the rest of the residents would let it go. After all, it didn't seem like this was a new conflict. More like yet another scrap in an ongoing war between Handler and his neighbour. "Handler will be leaving the premises as soon as we're finished here. You'll be able to enjoy the rest of your evening in peace."

"You mockin' me, baby?" 

Strike three. 

Her patience evaporated, and with it, the helpful, happy facade that she'd been forcing melted away. Her face went cold, and the man recoiled the exact moment she let her expression shutter. 

"Leave," she ordered.

He breathed in, inflating with the air and squaring his shoulders back as his fight versus flight warred inside him. Then his stupidity won, and he coiled up and threw a punch. 

Natasha blocked it, letting his knuckles deflect off the back of her forearm. He tilted back, surprised, and then flung himself forward again.  
  She ducked and caught him with her shoulder smacking in the centre of his chest. He careened off and hit the door frame head first, sending the door bouncing open the rest of the way. The handle smacked into the wall behind, sinking there and sending a shower of drywall to dust the floor and not ricocheting back again. 

The man snarled. He righted himself, again looking like he might charge forward.

A burst of noise from further down the hall caught Natasha's attention. It caught the man's as well, and he turned to look toward the stairwell just before the door opened.

Three uniformed police officers filed into the hallway and fanned out in an angle formation, one taking point and the other two flanking. Natasha wrinkled her nose and took a step back, intent on slamming the apartment door in the man's face and removing herself from the situation altogether.

No such luck.

"Both of you, out in the hall with your hands against the wall," the point officer ordered. 

Wonderful.

The man, a bruise already starting to come up along his temple from where he'd fallen headlong into the doorframe, grudgingly trudged over to the far side of the hallway with his hands up, spreading them and laying his palms flat against the wall like he did this often. Not interested in being the difficult party, Natasha followed suit.

"I'm a special agent with S.H.I.E.L.D.," she said to the wall. "My I.D.’s in my coat pocket."

"We got a call about a domestic disturbance," the officer said. A presence approached behind her, stopping a foot away. The hair on the back of her neck prickled at his standing so close without her being able to turn and look at him. “No intel about an operation on the ground here." He didn't sound aggressive, just doubtful, and maybe a bit pissed that some federal organization was toeing around and messing with jurisdiction lines.

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "It's Christmas Eve," she said. "How much communication do you expect there to be?”

One of the other officers started searching the man, the shush-shushing of hands brushing down cheap fabric reaching her ears.

“Check my I.D.,” she said.

"What pocket?" the point officer asked, moving over to stand next to her. She shifted, moving to pull out her folio—which had her Avengers I.D. in it as well, so there went her cover—prompting the cop to snap, "I'll get it."

Natasha pressed her lips together and flexed her fingertips against the wall. "Front left."

He bent a bit, his head entering her peripheral vision, and dug around for a moment until he'd grabbed it, then pulled back. Very polite, and mostly professional, despite having pulled Christmas Eve duty. 

" _Fucking shit_ ," he swore when he opened it. "Ma'am. Apologies."

Natasha dropped her arms and held out her hand for the wallet, which the cop fumbled and almost dropped as he passed it over. He stared at her, really stared, as he connected her name on the I.D. with her face. "Sorry to inconvenience you, Sir. Ma'am—M-Miss Widow."

"Agent Romanoff is fine."

"Yes, Ma'am. Agent Romanoff. Ma'am."

Doing her very best to ignore the stuttering—and the way the other two had frozen in place, the one officer mid-pat down—Natasha indicated the apartment behind her. 

"I have a man cuffed in there. His name is Ernest Handler. He's a cousin of the man whose name is on the rental agreement for this unit. I need him remanded into custody and dropped off at this address—“ she passed over a card with H.Q.’s information on it “—before sun-up. I assume you can do that for me."

The cop looked so starstruck that he just started nodding, though Natasha wasn't quite sure he'd heard everything she'd said. 

Natasha offered up a tight smile. "I have another appointment tonight. I'll leave the situation in your hands,” she glanced at the name placard on his shirt, “Officer Mandel."

She nodded to him, and then the other two, and left the floor at a quick clip and headed back to street level. She had a brief thought that she should still, maybe, check the last family member's unit, but she already knew Grinch was smart enough not to hang around if he saw police activity. If he'd been here, he'd've been long gone the moment the car pulled up outside.

Natasha hit the lobby and pulled her scarf back up around her face. The squad car sat outside, lights flashing and sending red and blue flickering across the canvas of white snow. No media vans had pulled up yet, and that hopefully meant that any radioing Mandel was doing had left her name out of it. 

Hands shoved deep in her pockets, Natasha took off before they could catch on and catch up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made minor continuity edits to the first chapter to keep it more in sync with the rest of the series. Enjoy!

Melinda hadn't meant to stay up half the night, but now it was 3 am Christmas Day and between her quiet cell phone and quieter apartment, she'd been having problems sleeping.

Stupid, maybe, but the thought of the incomplete, unsolved op files sitting on her desk kept causing her to toss and turn. Twice, she'd woken from dreams that the loose ends of the case had been tied up, gift wrapped in a neat little bow and presented all wrapped and festive. 

The holidays had taken root in and infested her brain. 

Her phone, lying on the coffee table, lit up and gave three quick bursts of vibration, and Melinda crossed the dim living room. Hoping she might still doze off again with her head leaning against the window pane, she'd plugged in the lights on the tree and manoeuvred around by that source alone.

A text alert from Hill's private line. _'Is Romanoff with you?'_

Melinda rolled her eyes, and glanced over to the tree where the glass dove ornament hung. She could pick it out in an instant, she'd looked at it so often, though the tree was otherwise cluttered in ornaments. No, Natasha wasn't with her, because she was out god-knew-where, probably working through the night like the workaholic she was.

She texted back, wondering if Maria expected her to be awake or not.

The phone started ringing less than ten seconds later.

"May."

 _"I need you to call Romanoff. I assumed she wasn't answering my calls because she was sleeping, and that Metro PD was wrong when they woke me up twenty minutes ago."_  Hill sounded pissed, and Melinda couldn't blame her. _"Clearly that wasn't the case."_

"What did Metro say?"

_"That the Black Widow has a ream of paperwork to fill out regarding the arrest of an Advent Gang member at an apartment building in Queens earlier this evening. Apparently she served orders and didn't hang around."_

That sounded like Natasha to a ’T’, whether she’d sworn she wouldn’t go AWOL on this case again or not. "The cops followed orders?" 

_"Couple of young guys on the ground figured she held rank over them."_

"Nat's good at that."

_"Right. Find her, and tell her I'm expecting her call."_

Hill hung up and the phone beeped at the termination of the call. Melinda forced down a yawn and went into the kitchen to turn on the kettle. She left her phone on the counter and leaned against the edge next to it, glancing down at the screen every couple of seconds as though something might change. But she knew Natasha wasn't going to call her—especially not if she was already ignoring Hill's calls. That suited her just fine. She could wait to get a little caffeine in her system before launching into work.

At least now she knew that her sleeping mind hadn't been totally off base, obsessing over work.

The kettle screamed its whistle and she shut it off and poured hot water with a splash into a mug. The sharp aroma of crushed orange pekoe filled the kitchen in an instant, and she yanked the teabag up and down in the water, impatiently watching as it darkened.

Three minutes later she blew across the steaming surface and took a sip, scalding her top lip in the process.

Only then, with the tender spot smarting, did she call Natasha.   
  She left the phone on the counter, letting speakerphone fill the kitchen with the echoing ringing noise. It gave two rings, and an aborted third that would have sent it into voicemail, before Natasha answered.

 _"Hi,"_ she sounded a little winded, like she'd been running or moving for a while—and with Natasha's stamina, that 'while' was 'quite a while' in normal people terms.

"Where are you?"

Silence on the other end for a moment. Then a non-specific, _"Manhattan."_

"Thank you," Melinda replied, rolling her eyes and looking down at her steaming teacup. Despite the still tender feeling in her lip, she picked it up and took another sip after blowing a long breath over the top. "Where?"

Silence again, though Melinda didn't think it was hesitation or reluctance to answer, so much as Natasha being busy and distracted by something else. Minimal amounts of background noise came through the line, though, giving her no clue of what might be going on on the other end. The occasional car going by. That was about it.

_"Rockefeller Plaza.”_

Again? Melinda poured the tea into a travel mug and grabbed the phone before she crossed back into the bedroom to change into a pair of jeans and a sweater. "Stay there," she said. "I'm coming."

 _"No,"_ Natasha said. 

"Wasn't giving you a choice. And call Hill."

_"Oh, is that what this is about? Here I thought you were calling because you were worried about me."_

Melinda rolled her eyes and prayed for patience. "Just stay there."

 

Even at this early an hour on Christmas Day, New York City had traffic. Still, Melinda reached Rockefeller Plaza in good enough time.

She left the car parked next to a blockade, half pulled onto the sidewalk in a completely illegal manoeuvre and, hoping it hadn't been towed by the time she got back to it, slammed the door and darted toward the tree. 

Natasha wasn't anywhere to be seen, not that Melinda had expected her to stay put. Her phone hadn't lit up with any further activity since she'd left the apartment—neither from Natasha nor from Hill—so she had no way of knowing if something had gone down while she was en route or not.

Hating being kept in the dark, and feeling more than a little bit of resentment, Melinda started a loop around the Plaza. 

The tree stood tall and proud in the centre of it, repaired from the day it had toppled and not swaying like it had the day they'd watched it being raised, the lights within its branches glowing bright and adding so much light to the Plaza that it might as well have been daytime with the way it flooded the area. Two people lay, hidden beneath piles of blankets, across a subway exhaust vent. Melinda bent as she passed to make sure they were actually sleeping, not frozen, and continued on.

Natasha had sounded like she'd been moving right up until she'd answered the phone, and between that and her failure to commit to staying where she was as Melinda had asked, Melinda didn’t expect to find her still hanging around.

But she didn't see any sign of an altercation or struggle here either. The few snow piles that had been left were quite trampled over by the feet of thousands of tourists and commuters, and one or two more sets of footprints wouldn't jump out as being recent enough to mean anything.

So she called Natasha again. She looked around as the phone rang, half hoping that she might hear a ringtone echo back a response from the other side of the tree. 

No such luck, and this time Natasha let the phone go to voice mail.

On her own, then, unless she happened to stumble across Natasha—unlikely, since Nat would keep herself out of sight—she ran through what little she knew about the situation. Natasha had already made an arrest tonight. With only two of the Advent Gang members having been outstanding, it was probably the remaining underling and not Grinch himself that she'd managed to catch up with.

So she probably thought that he was going to strike, by himself, just in time for Christmas morning.

At 3 am, their patrol crews already made bare bones by the holiday season would be down to a mere one or two patrol cars, driving around on their own and trying to keep an eye on all of the possible targets. The odds of their being in the right place to stop another hit were slim to none.

Natasha would be working opposite them, making sure to never be in the same place at the same time, so Melinda pulled out her phone and pulled up a schedule.

Rockefeller Plaza. 3:30 am Christmas Day. She scrolled up and down the list. There was, in fact, only one name on the schedule now—and he was supposed to be somewhere down in the financial district, driving around the Stock Exchange and far from most of the possible targets. Certainly, he wasn't anywhere near here. 

Melinda looked up at the tree, then down at the skating rink, leaning over the railing on a whim to peer out over it.

The rink had been closed up for the night, of course, and it was appropriately dark, the long shadows cast by the walls around it giving it shady black corners that the tree and square lights couldn't reach.   
  Something caught her eye, though, and Melinda pulled back, moving out of sight in case whoever—or whatever—had moved happened to glance up.

It could have been anyone, or anything, but her instincts said _Advent Gang_  and _Grinch_  and she realized at about the same moment that Natasha, if indeed she'd been here at all and not lying about her position, had moved on.

Leaving Melinda on her own. Her heartbeat picked up, and the rushing urge to move as her adrenaline spiked. She hadn't come armed, nor had she come dressed for a fight. 

She took a moment to send a quick message to Natasha: _'At Rockefeller Plaza. Something here. Engaging.'_  And then put her phone away without waiting for a response. The stairs down to the rink were on the other side. She made the circuit, keeping herself far enough back from the railing so as not to risk her shadow being cast down onto the ice and tipping off her location for whoever was down there.

The gate to the stairwell was padlocked, and Melinda turned the lock over in her hand, resting it gently back against the gate so that it wouldn't jingle. It hadn't been messed with, so whoever was down there had leapt over it, or otherwise let themselves down some other way.

Melinda pulled herself up and over the gate, dropping with a soft 'thump' on the other side. 

A burst of noise came from the ice. Scrambling, then sliding and a distant cuss. Melinda spun and went down the stairs at a run. There was a figure there, pushing himself back to his feet. And if she'd had any remaining doubt about his being her target, the costume he wore dissuaded her of it.

He appeared to be wearing a bodysuit with elf shoes—not skates—and a beanie made of the same fuzzy fabric with a pompom on the tip. He regained his feet and slid across the ice as she reached it. He hit a patch of light at the base of the opposite staircase, and the light threw the green of his costume into relief. 

A bodysuit, yes, but a fuzzy green one like a Grinch costume. And it wasn't a pompom at all, but a burst of the same green fur on the top of his head. He looked over his shoulder at her, giving her a glimpse of the mask he wore—like something straight off of the set of a movie.

Her feet threatening to slide out from under her if she moved anymore quickly than a penguin-like shuffling walk, Melinda pushed across the ice, skating on the flat bottoms of her boots.

"Stop!" she called after Grinch. She looked side-to-side around the rink as she went, scoping out the area and looking for any damage he'd already managed to wreak. 

Grinch laughed. He reached the stairs and took them two at a time. "You may have stopped my Whos but you're not going to save Christmas!" he called back when he reached the top of the stairs. He spoke in a strong Boston accent, and Melinda put that information away for identification. He had snow all down his front from falling on the ice and sliding across it, and he ran gloved hands that had long, prosthetic fingers, across his chest to dust it off. 

 _Save Christmas._ As though she'd fallen into a Lifetime holiday special. And _Whos_ , really?

Anyway, _her_  goal wasn't to save Christmas—though Natasha's certainly seemed to be. Melinda was just along for the ride.

She glided the last foot to the base of the stairs and took them just as quickly as he had, but Grinch hit something on his belt and slid through the gaps in the bars as though they weren't solid at all. He appeared on the other side a moment later and made a face at her, then took off at a run.

The same tech as their roof hopping Santa had used to get up and down chimneys, all those weeks ago. But they'd confiscated the belt from that Gang member (she refused to call them Whos, of all names), and where there were two of something, there was probably more. 

Another mental note, that sometime in the new year, when SHIELD had returned to full staffing, they were going to need to tie up some loose ends on this case and get as much of this tech off the streets and in to be analyzed by R&D.

Melinda reached the top of the stairs and banged her hand flat against the gate, hoping that it would give.   

No such luck.

Taking a deep breath in to brace herself, Melinda leapt up and heaved herself up over the gate again. This time, she dropped with a little less grace on the other side and didn't give herself a moment to recover before she took off after Grinch. He moved more quickly in that costume than she would've thought possible, running at a full-out sprint without tripping over the curled points on his shoes, without catching himself on any of the patches of black ice that were here and there on the stone of the plaza.

Melinda wasn't so lucky. Her boots were dressy rather than functional, and the gripping treads on the bottoms were all but non-existent. She'd thrown on the first thing she grabbed that had some sort of warmth to it before booking it out of the apartment, not expecting to come face-to-face with their target before she found Natasha. She should've known better.

Her phone started to buzz in her pocket. Melinda ignored it, sliding on another patch of ice and worried more about keeping her balance than she was on whoever was calling her. She fought to keep Grinch in her sights, but the brisk, frigid air in lungs more accustomed to working behind a desk than on the ground, outside, made it hard for her to keep up. He had to be using the device on his belt to keep moving at this speed—that or she was chasing down an Olympic sprinter.

More than 300 yards ahead of her and gaining distance, Grinch rounded a corner and disappeared into an alleyway. By the time Melinda reached it, he was out of sight. She stopped, caught her breath and looked up at the fire escapes lining the alley. A fifteen-foot-high fence stood at the far end, walling the alley off into a dead end. That didn't mean anything, of course—the belt could probably shrink him small enough to fit through the tiny gaps between the wood slats—but she thought he'd gone up, rather than straight through.

She looked up, squinting into the darkness and trying to choose which side of the alley was her best bet for climbing. 

  They weren't too far away from Times Square, and she didn't need to linger too long on the type of havoc he could wreak on the bright billboards there if he hacked into them. _Saving Christmas_ , indeed. 

  Melinda went with the left fire escape. 

It creaked and clanked with each movement, the metal cold and stiff in the frigid December temperatures. She'd remembered gloves, at least, so she could climb up the cascades of ladders with some nimbleness, and no risk of her skin sticking to the frozen metal.

In her pocket, her phone buzzed again. Melinda, halfway to the roof of the building, started reaching for it before shaking her head. She didn't have time. Once Grinch was subdued, then she could get Natasha here to help drag him back to HQ.

On the roof she looked left, right and then left again, scoping out her surroundings, but it was a normal enough looking rooftop. Knee deep in snow, with a couple of trails shovelled off by custodial staff who needed to move between the water tank and roof entrance from the interior.

She'd chosen the right fire escape, though. A fresh trail had been broken through the snow in front of her, the gait longer than her own, and Melinda took long, unnatural steps that stretched her legs out to try and walk in the footprints already made there. The trail ended at the cleared path, but the snow had been spilled outward toward the water tank rather than the doorway to the interior of the building.

Her phone was ringing again. She reached into her pocket and hit the button on the side to stop the vibrating.

A gust of wind blew across the rooftop, catching her hair and whipping it out and threatening to lift her hat off of her head. Melinda tugged it back more firmly around her ears and across her forehead, shivering as the wind cut through her coat. The water tank creaked, and swayed, and Melinda looked up, up, up. Against the black sheet of sky, empty of stars and lit like a glowing dome by the light pollution of the city, she could just make out Grinch's fuzzy figure straddling the top of the tank. 

He leaned over the edge and waved those long fingers at her. She was sure if she could make out his face, he'd be giving her a mocking smirk.

Her hand strayed to her belt for the gun that wasn't there.

"Come down!" she ordered, but the wind grabbed her words and whipped them away behind her. It shrieked in her ears, and even if Grinch had heard her and responded, she wouldn't have known. 

She crossed to the bottom of the water tank, ignoring the ominous creaking that suggested it might fall right over on her—it hadn't so far, and she was sure it had to be decades old—and circled it until she found the bottom of an access ladder, two feet above her head. She clapped her hands together to knock off the ice still clinging to her gloves from her climb up the fire escape, and leapt up, catching the bottom rung in her hands on the second try.

She pulled herself up with muscles angry from the exertion up to this point, and only paused a minute to catch her breath and brace herself once her feet, too, were solidly on the ladder. She had to cling tight to the rungs to stay there—each gust of wind caught her across the stomach through the ladder and threatened to throw her backward.

Grinch poked his head out over the top of the tank and looked down at her. She could swear, for a moment, that he'd stuck his tongue out at her, though the darkness kept his face in such shadowed relief that it might have just been a trick of the light. He pulled back out of sight when she reached the platform the tank sat on and pulled herself over the guard railing, landing neatly on her feet in a space where a great circle of snow had been disturbed, like Grinch had fallen face first into it.

"I have a gun! Don't come any higher!"

There was a second ladder from the platform to the top of the tank itself, and Melinda paused at the bottom of it. Though he'd clearly been addressing her, Grinch wasn't leaning over the top and looking down at her again. His voice was out of breath and trying to be tough, like he thought he could get her to back down with threats alone. A trickster who'd been pranking the city from the shadows for a month didn't like conflict—imagine that.

Melinda, cradling the upper part of the railing with her back, leaned as far back as she could to look upward. She could just make out the tips of Grinch's long green fingers, clutching the edge of the tower, and numbering high enough that, if he had a gun, he wasn't holding it right now.

"You're going to have to come down to me," Melinda said. "If you don't want me up there."

She should've called for backup. Should’ve answered Natasha’s call. She didn't want to start climbing up and risk him jumping down and getting away again, without anyone covering the ground.

"Not a chance! I have three more spots to hit tonight, and you're not going to delay me further!"

  Melinda pinched the bridge of her nose, immediately regretting it when cold, gritty feeling bits of water dripped down off her gloves and onto her cheeks.

"What's your goal, then?" she asked. "No—I know. You're trying to steal New York's Christmas but I scared you off the Rockefeller tree."

He didn't respond. 

"That was supposed to be your big finale, right?" Melinda continued. "Ernest was supposed to come and meet you, but he didn't show, and then you got spooked. It's over,” she raced through the names that had been on the file, “Bradley.”

"I'm _the Grinch_."

"I'll make sure the media knows that's your code name if you come down now." She was starting to shiver—the wind didn't seem to be coming from any particular direction, rather it hit her everywhere and the water tank didn't provide any sort of shelter at all.

"I don't even know who you are," Grinch continued, as though she hadn't spoken. "Everyone else—Everyone else got arrested by an _Avenger_  and me, I'm the leader, and I get _you_?"

He _wanted_  to be arrested?

"I just wanted to create enough chaos in the city that I'd get to meet the Avengers, and _everyone else did_ , and I'm stuck with some _beat cop_."

Melinda bristled, annoyance flashing through her. _Beat cop_. Cute, he thought he and his gang were big time, instead of just Natasha's pet project. She should’ve known that press conference would come back to bite them in the ass.

Melinda climbed up the first couple of rungs of the second ladder, taking care to set her feet lightly in a bid to minimize the amount of creaking it made. As long as he wasn't looking down at her, he couldn't know how close she was getting—and if he did have a gun, she needed to disarm him as soon as she could.

"I'm Agent Melinda May with S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she said when her hands were on the top rung. 

His surprise at the nearness of her voice rumbled through her as a physical reaction when he fell back, crashed down heavily on the top of the tank lid and shook the steel with a great racket that shook the tower.

Melinda clung to the railing until it steadied, then launched herself up onto the lid as quickly as she dared. She landed, cat-like on all fours with her hands deep in the snow.

Handler recovered faster than she thought he would. He righted at the same time she did, leaping up like he weighed nothing at all. He brandished a gun at her, held awkwardly with his hand not quite right on the butt and fingers trailing away from the trigger. One handed, too, like he was trying to show more form than he had. It could have been awkwardness brought on by the prosthetics in the gloves extending his fingers, but it looked more as though he was unsure of the gun and afraid that he might accidentally set it off.

The top of the tank was six, maybe seven feet across, and slanted the tiniest bit. With no room for an extended struggle, Melinda kept her hands down low, unthreatening. The wind screamed in her ears.

"Put the gun down," she said, even as she calculated the distance between them, running scenarios through her head one after the other.

Each one played out better than the one before it, but none of them were great.

Handler's gun hand wavered, and he brought his other hand up and wrapped it around the first. He slid his feet out into a position that almost made it look like he knew what he was doing with the weapon.

But his arms shook, and she doubted he'd ever even fired a gun in a range.

Which didn't, of course, mean he couldn't accidentally pull the trigger and hit her.

"The gun, Bradley," she repeated. "Put it down."

"No! Call the Avengers. Go on. I know you can."

Preposterous, if he thought she was regular NYPD. Or maybe the residents of New York really thought that the Avengers were available, at the drop of a hat, at the beck and call of any law enforcement agency who might need their services. Handler likely knew, though, that she had a direct line to one of the Avengers—never mind that they’d gone out of their way to try and minimize the role the group played in pursuing the Gang.

  The Gang itself didn't seem to have bought it even if the larger public had. Her temptation to get Natasha here evaporated again.

 _Call the Avengers_ , indeed.

She measured the distance between them with a glance, keeping her arms out to her sides the whole time lest she spook him. Then she launched forward, ducking below the focus of the gun barrel. She caught Handler with her hand like a blade across his torso.

The Grinch costume provided a lot of padding and it hadn't been a hard hit, but Handler pinwheeled anyway. He stumbled back, arms flailing. The gun fell somewhere off to her right. Handler dove after it and Melinda spared a moment to be thankful it hadn't discharged, then knocked Handler flat with a strike across the back of his shoulder blades.

The top of the tank was sloped just enough for snow released by the struggle to start sliding off. Ice covered the steel underneath it and Handler slipped an inch or two forward before he managed to halt himself with desperate scrambling of his hands.

Melinda picked up the gun and flipped the safety on before tucking it away in her coat pocket.

Then, and only then, did she finally check her phone.

 

Natasha arrived within ten minutes of Melinda's giving her the location, and didn't say a word. She cast Melinda sidelong glances instead, looking her up and down out of the corner of her eye—pretending that she wasn’t—while she rounded up Handler and passed him off to a team for processing.

Back on the ground, she handed over a sheaf of paperwork for Melinda to fill out—the rest of the file on the Advent Gang, that they could put to bed at last. She didn't let go when Melinda reached out to take it.

"You ignored my calls," she said.

"I was busy," Melinda pointed out. 

Natasha looked frustrated, like this wasn't a good enough excuse.

"Why didn't you stay home?" she asked. Same conversation, different angle. 

 _Why did you throw yourself into the field?_ was what Natasha was really asking, and trying to come across like she wasn't. _Why didn't you let me do this for you?_

"I got a call from Hill," Melinda reminded her. "You didn't have backup."

"Neither did you."

"I thought I was coming to back _you_ up."

Natasha pressed her lips together at that, and Melinda hadn't quite meant to accuse her of leaving her without backup, because it wasn't wholly true—Natasha had called. 

"I was trying to find you." She'd probably only been a couple of streets away the entire time, if she'd started at Rockefeller Plaza before Melinda had arrived there. "I should've..." Natasha trailed off and shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said.

Melinda, who'd started to flip through the paperwork and read the documents already filled in by Natasha earlier that night, relating to the arrest that she'd already made, looked up and froze. 

"For what?" she hazarded when Natasha didn't continue.

"Missing him. Leaving you alone."  She shook her head. Her hair stood up in a tangled mess already, snared like she'd taken her hat off and run her hands through it a few times without flattening it again. "I was so _obsessed—_ “

"Natasha," Melinda said, holding her hand out, palm up, to cut her off. "We're both tired."

But Natasha had her lips pressed together again, brow furrowed and frustrated. "This isn't about my being tired," she said. "This is..." she trailed off like she was grappling for words that wouldn't come.

People surged around them, packing up the scene and taking notes and photographs. Melinda gestured for Natasha to follow her and started heading back to where she'd left her car. Natasha trailed behind her. Melinda didn't particularly want to have any in depth conversation about their relationship where other people could overhear—no doubt Natasha felt the same way, and that was holding her back from speaking.

"I left my car over by the tree,” Melinda said, and slowed down so that Natasha was forced to catch up with her and keep pace. 

Natasha gave a vague nod. "I'm a few streets over," she said. "Why did you message me and then not respond when I tried to call you?"

They were less than half a block away from the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. team and moving at a quick enough pace to leave them out of earshot.

"I was occupied keeping my eyes on the target," Melinda said. 

Natasha's lips twisted like she wasn't buying it.

"Is it that important to you that I stole your arrest?" 

"What?" Natasha spun, stopping dead in the middle of the sidewalk and looking genuinely caught off guard. 

Melinda crossed her arms. "Well?"

For a moment, Natasha looked so frustrated with, and appalled by, the accusation that Melinda thought she might storm off and not respond at all. She turned away, arms hanging limply by her sides, hands flexing like they wanted to clench into fists, but like she was holding herself back from showing that much aggression.

"You said you wouldn't take off on your own again after last time," Melinda said.

"I know."

"And?"

Natasha shook her head. "What do you want me to say?" she asked. "Are you really going to take me to task for this? Hill's all over my ass for it already." She pulled out her phone and turned, flashing it at Melinda and showing her a blast of missed calls. "I was doing my job."

 A gust of wind blew across them and Melinda pulled her arms more tightly around herself, shrugging her shoulders to try and stay warm. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the street was cold.

Natasha's brow creased, and she took an aborted step forward, then looked around as though she was expecting an audience.

"I didn't want you to have to do this," she said, and those limp arms lifted a little helplessly. "I wanted to—“

"Protect me," Melinda said.

Natasha's lips pressed together. She looked embarrassed to be caught out. "Yes," she said finally, with a little helpless shrug. "Melinda, I don’t—I don't think you're incapable of protecting yourself. I don't want you to think that," she said quickly.

“What should I think?”  
   
Natasha looked away again, looking as uncomfortable—if not more so—as she had that day they'd spoken in Stark's garage about their relationship. Her fingers curled and her eyes were wide and unblinking, focused on a pile of snow somewhere to the left of her foot. 

"Natasha? What should I think?" she repeated.

"I love you."

Melinda froze, so shocked that she had to take a deep breath to catch up her sore lungs when she forgot to breathe.

Natasha turned away again, her shoulders lifted a little helplessly. "I think that's what this is," she said. Open and honest and raw, without a hint of the light flirtation Melinda would've expected from her to hide the emotion of such a confession behind.  She didn't know how to respond, and silence stretched between them, thick and heavy and veering toward awkward the longer it went on. 

Natasha tilted her head back and stared up at something in the sky—maybe the tip of Avengers' Tower, just barely visible between the other skyscrapers pressing down on them. Then she shook her hair out and raked her fingers through it. "Let's go home," she said. Her tone didn't reveal anything at all, but she started forward again without looking back at Melinda, like she could walk away from the confession and leave it behind where she'd spoken it.

Melinda took a couple of quick steps to catch up with her, and caught her by the elbow. "Nat," she prompted. 

Natasha paused. 

"I..."

"I don't need you to respond," Natasha said. She did turn then and the truth of her statement shone openly in her eyes. "You wanted my motive, there it is."

Her mind reeling but coming up with nothing to say, Melinda hugged her. Natasha returned it in kind and they pressed each other close. Natasha's heat finally helped her to block out some of the briskness of the wind and feel warm again, and when they broke apart, Natasha pressed a kiss to her cheek.

With arms wrapped around each other's waists and their steps in sync, they made their way down the street.

**Author's Note:**

> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com


End file.
